Everyone needs a marketing eye

Marketing Eye Blog Entries

How much does a marketing plan cost?

One of the first questions businesses and potential start ups want to know when they get in contact is: How much does a marketing plan cost? Although this is a difficult question to answer, I’ll try here to explain some general pricing guidelines.

Our marketing plans can typically cost from €1,000 to €5,000. Prices increase dramatically dependent on how much market research you require (both primary and secondary).

Local vs National vs International

Where’s your focus? If you’re focused on a local market, we won’t have to spend as much time researching that market as we would if you were planning to start exporting into new markets.

Goals and Objectives

If you’re trying to increase sales by 5% or brand awareness among your key target market by 15%, we would look at different ways to accomplish these totally different objectives. That’s why we always spend time sitting down with you to identify what it is you’re trying to accomplish. Our process is normally two meetings with you, your stakeholders and time in between for more research and due diligence.

Size of your business

Obviously a marketing plan for a large business is very different in scope and complexity from one we would develop for a simple self employed business looking to start getting some new clients. Depending on the company, we will mystery shop, conduct interviews with customers and lost prospects to feed data into the plan rather than rely on assumptions.

Your marketing budget

If you have thousands to spend, there will be lots more tactics looked at and costed (all of which take time). If you have a very limited budget (or none), it is a much quicker and simple marketing plan to develop.

Commitment to business growth

If you want grow fast, different tactics need to be looked at and researched.

Tolerance for risk

Some clients don’t want to change too much from what they’ve always done, just a review to see can they make simple, easy improvements. A marketing plan for this type of business is very different from one developed for a high potential start up that wants to disrupt their market before competitors react.

Prior initiatives

If you’ve already tested lots of marketing tactics and want to simply improve them as you truly know your customer and your market, your marketing plan could be completed for between €1,000 and €1,500. Note that these are “typical” numbers; actual prices could be above or below these ranges.

Your market research requirements

If you’re looking for trends and analysis, in-depth analysis and/or brainstorming on the problem your customer has and identifying routes to market, this research takes time and can add considerable hours to the development of the plan but is always worth doing. Research is key as otherwise you can simply use a template (and there are lots out there) and copy what your competitors are doing.

All of these numbers and prices are very general. Still, I hope this article helps you to have a better feel for marketing plan pricing and what to expect when you start going through the process.

We’re happy to help you get an actual price for your marketing plan, just get in touch on 087 9490343.